Kevin Bacon wanted to be a regular guy for a day, and he didn’t have a great time.
In an interview with Vanity Fair published on Wednesday, the actor said he had always wanted to experience being a non-famous person, so he decided to try out a disguise.
“I’m not complaining, but I have a face that’s pretty recognizable,” Bacon, 65, told Vanity Fair. “Putting my hat and glasses on is only going to work to a certain extent.”
To make his disguise as realistic as possible, the Golden Globe-winning actor visited a special effects makeup artist, who made him prosthetics.
With “fake teeth, a slightly different nose, and glasses,” Bacon said he managed to walk down The Grove in Los Angeles without being recognized.
And the experience wasn’t as pleasant as he thought it would be.
“People were kind of pushing past me, not being nice. Nobody said, ‘I love you.’ I had to wait in line to, I don’t know, buy a fucking coffee or whatever,” Bacon said. “I was like, This sucks. I want to go back to being famous.”
Considering how he’s been active in Hollywood since 1978 — when he was 20 — it comes as no surprise that he’s accustomed to living life as a celebrity.
According to IMDB, Bacon has 91 film and video acting credits as of 2024. His most iconic role is in 1984’s “Footloose,” where he plays the lead character Ren McCormack.
It’s also not unusual for people to treat celebrities or other high-profile individuals differently, especially if they don’t recognize the person. And Bacon isn’t the only famous person who’s set out to discover what life is like as a regular person — and who hasn’t liked what they found.
Last year in San Francisco, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi moonlighted as a driver for the company for a few months in an attempt to figure out why recruitment was low. After creating an alias, he drove around picking up passengers in a Tesla Model Y.
What he found during the stint were rude riders. “I think that the industry as a whole, to some extent, has taken drivers for granted,” Khosrowshahi told The Wall Street Journal.
He also found one passenger who, after recognizing him, sought out startup advice.
A representative for Bacon did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.
